The human body is supported and protected both at rest and in motion by numerous different support structures. Most notable are structures such as seats, beds and the like which support the human body including the torso, appendages and the head in a variety of standing and nonstanding positions under a variety of different circumstances. Accordingly, there is always a need for improvements in seating and support structures which comfortably and securely support the human body.
Conventional seating and support structures often fall short of their goal to provide comfort, conformability and security. Traditional soft structures utilize cushions which are indented by the weight of the person seated thereon, and thus conform somewhat to the body contours of that person. However, soft structures do not provide adequate support. Attempts have been made in the past to provide rigid seating and support structures which conform to the contours of the human body. Such seats have support surfaces grooved or indented therein to fit the specific contours of the human body, such as the head and neck and the back and buttocks areas. While rigid, conformed seat structures provide some support, they are usually mass produced and marketed, and thus, they are generally manufactured to provide support for the average body shape and/or size. That is, currently available rigid seating and support structures are designed to fit and support the largest percentage of people, and consequently, they sacrifice individual comfort, complete support and sometimes even safety in the process. As may be appreciated, mass produced rigid seating and support structures simply cannot be made, to fit every body, shape, and size perfectly using current technology.
Other attempts have been made to make conformable seating which constantly adjusts to a variety of different body shapes and sizes. One such prior art seating structure involves the use of cushions and cushion sections filled with beadlike material or beads. The individual beads move around each other within the cushion such that the cushion conforms to take on a shape generally conforming to the body contours of the seated person. Once the beads are adequately displaced and the cushion has conformed to the contours of the body, air or some other fluid is removed by vacuum or otherwise evacuated from the cushion and the motion of the beads is inhibited. This freezes the cushion into a rigid, contoured shape with a surface which maintains the contour shape of the body.
The prior art conformable seating and support structures, however, also have various shortcomings. For example, a person sitting in such a seat usually has to vigorously move around to adequately displace the beads and conform the seat. More specifically, the seated person has to push or otherwise drive their body into the seat structure to indent various cushion portions while making various other cushion portions rise to fit the unique and individual contours of the person's body. Such vigorous motion is tiring and unnecessary and may not even be feasible if the seated person is very young, elderly or in an otherwise weakened state. Additionally, the shape the seat attains after driving the body into the seat is not necessarily the shape you want for the body to be in its most restful position. Still further, prior art conformable seating and support structures have a tendency to maintain their evacuated and contoured shape even after air has been reintroduced because the friction between the compressed beads makes the beads stay clumped together even after the vacuum is broken.
Consequently, there is a need for a conformable seating or support structure, which will readily and accurately conform to the contours of an object or body placed thereon without requiring undue body motion. Furthermore, there is a need for a conformable support structure which will quickly and completely resume its neutral position when the supported object or body is removed, thus preparing the structure to receive another body or object. Still further, there is a need for a support structure which will comfortably and securely conform to and support any size or shape of body in a variety of different support situations. The present invention, as disclosed below, achieves these and other objectives as will become apparent from the summary of the invention and detailed description given hereinbelow.